TALES FROM A FAR NORTH FOREST

POLLY WONDERS IF IT’S POSSIBLE TO SLOW DOWN TIME. SHE FINDS IT IS

Polly attempts to slow down time

ACCORDING TO THE Vodafone helpdesk worker consulting her map, we live in a black hole. I’d rung to ask why our valley’s usually terrible cellphone reception had lately become even worse. “You’re in a black hole,” the woman repeated with relish. “There’s nothing we can do.”

The family considered the judgement with interest. As we informed the kids, a black hole is a region of space with such an intense gravitational field that it sucks in everything. While there’s nothing black about our remote, forest-encircled valley, I’ve often thought it an area of interest to temporal physicists because something peculiar happens when we’re home. In short, time expands, decelerating whirring hours/days/ months into seasons, which are measured as Earth’s deep and protracted heartbeat. On occasion, this has been frustrating. It took four years before we gained an indoor kitchen and hot-water shower. It’s taken countless seasons to establish rich soil in the vegetable beds. The house remains a work-in-progress. Yet, the benefit of unwittingly joining the Slow Movement has been stumbling upon a rather obvious formula; adding time makes life last longer.

The recipe’s proof is particularly evident in the raising of children. Even though Vita, aged nine, yearns to enter the golden-hued Kingdom of Adulthood and groans at the distance to cover; the truth is, it really does pass in the blink of an eye. How can it be that our firstborn is already halfway through her childhood?

Adding time to her and six-year-old Zendo’s equation definitely slows down the journey. Doing things as a family, from games, art and reading aloud to hikes, discussions and explorations, adds a million golden moments of presence to the passage so that when I turn back to survey where we’ve traveled, it’s not such a blur.

In an era of “takeaway childhoods”, an off-grid lifestyle has drafted our kids into the unhurried lane. In some ways, theirs is a minimalist upbringing — without lots of toys or a succession of extracurricular activities (just karate, at present — their choice). Neither James nor I consider it our duty to entertain them. We give them the space to be fully present with themselves; this includes being with their boredom, which is boring, or getting resourceful and finding things to do independently. They play a lot. Sometimes a fantasy game’s so engaging that we postpone the more academic home-school lessons because isn’t play a child’s work?

Another thing happens when you stop rushing madly or straining towards the future: you uncover joy within the parameters of your world instead of seeking it elsewhere.

This is the joy found in the details of presence. The children and I gather before my first-ever batch of brewing honey mead, gleefully counting the seconds between bubbles as another belch rumbles from the fermentation. Joy’s in the pot of soup simmering all day on the woodstove, and the sourdough loaves on the rise. There’s joy in the wild forest’s advancement over a long-ago felled hillside and the swelling nubs of springtime buds on winter-bare fruit trees. It’s also in a piece of wood, slowly taking shape as I shave slivers from it.

I’ve become a whittler. I always intended it as a retirement hobby, but somehow Facebook learned of my plans, and a campaign of whittling adverts rained upon me. As predictable as a herded sheep, I reached for my credit card and snapped up a whittling set.

Afterwards, working out the exchange rate and clicking on the reviews by unsatisfied customers, I felt foolish and regretful, but delight returned when the parcel arrived. The knives are indeed tinny, and their bluntness is worse than my children critiquing the ageing process in their elders, but the activity’s every bit as satisfying as I ever hoped.

Fashioning spoons throughout the summer, I whiled away hours spent camping at sleepy bays. With piles of wood-shavings in my wake and a callus on my thumb, I’ve discovered one more way to carve out time from a frenetic world.